BJP attacks messenger while defending its president

Alma Romero |Friday, October 13, 2017

Probe if there is evidence, says RSS on Jay Shah row

Jay had also filed a civil defamation suit at the Ahmedabad district (Mirzapur) court against the news portal and damage for Rs 100 crore, but lawyers involved in filing of this case refused to divulge information.

On Thursday, Amit Shah spoke to Aaj Tak and claimed that his son's businesses are completely legitimate.

A senior RSS leader has said the alleged spurt in the turnover of a company owned by BJP chief Amit Shah's son should be probed if "the charges are prima facie true".

He added: "The business was of commodity trade which is a high value low profit venture". We have exported bajra, corn and rice while coriander was imported. "If a company's turnover becomes Rs one crore, its profit does not become Rs one crore", he was quoted as saying. "Where has money laundering been done?"

Interestingly, in the year 2015-16, its turnover suddenly leaped up to Rs 80.5 crore. "All the transactions happened through cheques and banks", he said.

Amit Shah clarified, "Please understand this is not corruption".

"A statement issued by Shah stated: 'Since the website has proceeded in making an absolutely false imputation in a highly slanted article thereby damaging my reputation I have made a decision to prosecute Author, Editor/(s) and the Owner/(s) of the aforesaid news website for criminal defamation and sue them for an amount of Rs. 100 crores..."

The criminal case has been filed against reporter Rohini Singh, founding editors of the news portal Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M K Venu, managing editor Monobina Gupta, public editor Pamela Philipose and the Foundation for Independent Journalism, the non-profit company that publishes The Wire.

"Even after facing so many corruption charges, Congress never filed a defamation suit but Jay has filed one..." His company has not done any dealings with the government, has not taken any land... Bringing the major political scandal during Congress rule, he pointed that his son didn't "received kickbacks like in the case of Bofors".

When asked about Jay's company securing unsecured loans, Shah said it was not unsecured loans.